


Obsidian Splinters

by Tamoline



Series: Crystalline [2]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-09 02:16:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16441106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamoline/pseuds/Tamoline
Summary: On the mean street of Brockton Bay, sometimes the truth needs a little help getting out. And sometimes Crystal even gets paid by her classmates, either in cold, hard cash, or in kind. What happens when a girl who Crystal owes a favour to wants her to find her brother?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the same continuity as [Just a Party](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16277096) featuring her trigger event, and you may want to read that to get a little more context for Crystal's character.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to FrustratedFreeboota and Kithri for editing my sleep deprived ramblings and making them vaguely coherent.

It was a cold and rainy day when Ellie came to find me. Not that this was in any way unusual for Brockton Bay in the late autumn. Fortunately, one of the perks of being born into New Wave was that I never had to worry about using my powers for even the most mundane shit. Like, for instance, creating a shimmering red shield of an umbrella against the water falling from the sky in not so much a downpour as an apathetic precipitation that couldn’t make up its mind between heavy drizzle and mustering up the energy to form actual raindrops.

“Hey,” Ellie said again, panting slightly from where she’d run to catch up with me. She was an awkward looking girl, thickset in the way that was hard distinguish between fat and muscle. Not that I knew her that well, but when I had seen her she’d usually had an intense and slightly dangerous air. It gave the impression that you could never be completely certain whether or not she was going to escalate if you poked her, even in the mostly safe environs of Arcadia.

Of course she never had done anything untoward, to the best of my knowledge — she was still at Arcadia for a start — but, like I said, I didn’t know her very well, and maybe my past experiences with her coloured my impressions. And she didn’t look intense or dangerous at the moment, just nervous and a little lost, slightly bedraggled as a trickle of water made its way down the side of her face from her lank brown hair.

I offered her a smile, and extended my rain shield over her. “Hey,” I said, and then waited for her to say her piece. I couldn’t imagine that she’d suddenly changed into a cape-chaser after three years of high school, but you never knew.

She shuffled from one foot to the other. “I hear you look into things for people,” she started.

Ah. “I have been known to,” I allowed. “Why, is there something you’d like me to look into?”

She dug into her pocket and took out her purse. “I can pay,” she said.

In the Pelham family household a little extra spending cash never hurt anyone, but from the looks of her clothes, I doubted she could afford much. Besides… “You don’t have to pay me a thing,” I said, gently pushing her hand away. “I owe you one.”

For a moment, she looked confused. Then I watched enlightenment flash across her face. She shook her head. “You don’t owe me a thing,” she said.

I shrugged. “And yet…” She’d helped me at a time when I’d been at my lowest, even though we’d never been friends, and it had meant more than I was willing to express. Her money was no good for this. “What do you want me to look into?” Hopefully it’d be something simple. Maybe she had a significant other she thought was cheating on her, or she’d had something stolen from her.

She chewed her lip, a part of her body which had already sustained some abuse by the looks of it. She finally burst out with, “It’s my brother, Gary. He’s missing.”

I searched my memory. “Older, skinny looking?” I hazarded. I’d seen someone like that waiting around for her a couple of times; too much similarity between their faces for anything but a familial resemblance, despite the difference in their frames.

She nodded jerkily, looking away from me, the moisture on her face no longer solely down to the inclement conditions. “He came to see me three days ago. He didn’t seem h—” she broke the sentence off, working her jaw, then started again. “Mom and Dad have banned him from the house, but they were gone and—” She looked back at me, her eyes bright, the skin around them red. “If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn… But he promised he was clean. He said that he’d be able to pay them back for everything. He was so elated that he could hardly hide whatever it was from me. But then he got a text, and said he had to leave but that he’d be back later.”

I nodded slowly. She didn’t need me to tell her that he’d probably been lying. That the best she could really hope for was that he really had come into a bit of money and had used it to score a hit. “Do you know where he was living?”

“He said if I ever needed to find him, I should ask around Clementine Avenue.” She chewed her lip again, looking ashamed. “My parents would throw a fit if I did.” I looked it up on my phone and hid a wince. No decent guy would tell someone to wander around that part of town. Not even if they had the look of someone who could handle themselves by Arcadis standards.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “But I have to ask — do you know what he was using?”

“H,” she said. “He always said that he would die before using meth or pot.” 

Well, that made things a little simpler. Not that heroin dealers were a nice lot, but the Empire had cornered a lot of that market in the Bay, so if I had to go trawling for dealers then I could at least avoid that part of town. Taking with them always made my skin crawl. It didn’t matter if they didn’t have a problem with my appearance. If anything, it only made it worse.

“Do you know who he owed money to?” Junkies always owed money to someone, the more people the better.

She laughed shortly, a kind of bruised sound I’d heard before. “Apart from my parents and me? No. But he wasn’t always like this, it was just—“ She slammed her mouth shut again, looking frustrated.

“Do you have a picture of him I could use?”

“What’s your number?” she asked. I told her, and she texted me a few photos of a smiling slender boy, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt bearing the faces of a band I hadn’t heard of. “They’re a few years old,” she said apologetically.

I didn’t tell her that the ‘good’ photos that she’d sent me would be a whole lot less useful than more up to date ‘bad’ ones. She doubtless knew that already, but wanted to share this memory of a time before things fell apart. And, truthfully, I could empathise.

It wasn’t as though my own extended family didn’t have keepsakes of their own.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks for FrustratedFreeboota and Kittius for the betaing

Clementine Avenue was pretty much exactly how I’d imagined it. The hollow bones of abandoned warehouses and industrial units, the ghosts of a more prosperous past. There were a few places that still looked somewhat maintained, their owners evidently willing to throw good money after bad, just in case the Bay somehow started thriving again. Most had been broken into, anything usable scavenged, the remains used as makeshift homes for anyone who couldn’t afford better.

I wasn’t here in costume. Mom didn’t exactly know about my side business at the school, and there’d be no quicker way to draw her attention and her ire than to do this as a cape. Dad had taught us ages ago the best way to project confidence in even the roughest parts of town. Not that it had always worked, of course, but then again I usually managed to talk my way out of it. And when that failed… well. I always had my powers But, alas, no powers meant that I was getting drizzled on, the rain proper having finally given up the ghost. At least I was prepared for trying to get some information on the cheap. I’d brought payment — a couple of large tupperware containers of sandwiches, and a few thermoses of coffee.

“I’m sorry, have you seen my brother?” I asked my latest candidate, a ragged white woman who looked middle aged, half buried under trash for warmth. I was fully prepared to hand out a couple of sandwiches and a styrofoam cup of coffee even if she hadn’t — the people around here definitely looked like they needed the sandwiches more than I needed the paltry bucks I’d spent preparing this.

She squinted at my phone, and nodded slowly. “Oh, that one,” she said. “He’s looking a lot less clean cut these days,” she added, cackling a little. “Yeah, him and his friends have taken over the warehouse across the road, five units down.”

“Have you seen him around the last few days?” I didn’t even have to feign the eagerness. For all the good will I’d hoped to buy on the cheap, everyone so far had claimed to know nothing of Gary.

The woman screwed up her face in thought. “The last few days,” she repeated slowly. “Honestly, time on street tends to blend together…”

She looked up at me hopefully, and I sighed, reaching for my purse. “Would five bucks help your memory?” It wasn’t much, but I really was running on a shoestring for this, the money from my last job having gone on a nice red dress that Mom didn’t need to know about for a party that Mom absolutely did not need to know about.

She looked at it doubtfully for a moment, but when no more was forthcoming, she snatched it. “Haven’t seen him for the last three days,” she said. “Thought he’d moved on.” Doubtfully, she added, “Though I guess he could be going and coming from the back entrance.”

I didn’t need her to spell out the rest. He never had before. Then again, if he’d attracted the wrong kind of attention, maybe he was trying to lay low.

“Thanks,” I said, sincerely. “Here, have the rest of these,” I handed her remnants of my sandwiches, for her to keep or share as she saw fit.

“Girl like you, you might not want to go into a place like that by yourself,” she warned.

Privately, I agreed with her, but I pressed my lips together in an attempt at a smile. “He’s my brother,” I said, and then started off in the direction she’d indicated.

The warehouse was as dank as I’d expected, the smells of mingled shit and urine noticeable permeating the alleyway leading up to a busted door, half off its hinges, that had been pushed shut. As I approached I heard conversation from within that ceased as soon as I knocked on the door.

A tense silence ensued until I called out, “I’m looking for my brother Gary. Gary McKinnock”

A quick whispered argument later, a raspy female voice called out, “Yeah, and what’s your name?”

“Ellie.”

Another argument, which seemed to resolve in favour of that actually being his sister’s name, or at least close to it. Which was just as well — it really would have been embarrassing if I’d been turned away because they’d misremembered his sister’s name.

“And why’re you looking for him?” the woman asked.

I tried my best to let a quaver enter my voice. “I’m worried about him. He was acting really odd the last time I saw him.”

It was apparently the right answer — there was some raucous laughter from within, then there was the sound of something being moved from behind the door and finally it opened, revealing a woman with straggly greasy black hair, popped veins all the way down both arms. She looked maybe thirty, though who knew how old she really was. 

“It’s probably because he owes me money,” she leered. She eyed me up and down. “Got anything to settle his debt for him?”

“I don’t have much,” I said, though I doubted that Gary owed this woman anything. Not because he wouldn’t have borrowed it if he could, but she had the look of someone who would shoot it all herself if she had anything to spare. “Would ten bucks pay it off?”

More laughter, revealing gums in dire need of dental work. “It’d be a start,” she said, then snapped her fingers impatiently when I didn’t immediately start fumbling for the money.

“Do you know where he is?” I tried my best to project confidence. Aided, admittedly, by the energy under my fingertips, almost aching to be released. “Or at least anywhere else he used to hang out?” After all, wherever he’d been charging his phone, it certainly wasn’t here.

The woman looked me up and down again, and something she saw this time stopped the laugher. “Okay,” she said. “Give me the ten dollars and I’ll tell you what I know.”

I slipped ten dollars out of my pocket — not the same one my purse was in — and held it in front of her., then snatched it away before she could grab it. “You can have it after you’ve told me where he is **and** let me look through anything he left here.”

“Okay,” she said, whining slightly, suddenly sounding a lot younger, like maybe only a few years older than me. Far too young to be as weathered-looking as she was. “He said he had a plan to get a lot of cash, enough that he wouldn’t be hurting for a score anytime soon and that he’d be able to pay off all his debts. When he didn’t come back…” She shrugged. “We thought maybe he made it. Or maybe he hadn’t.”

“I figured that he was stealing something where his boyfriend worked,” chimed in one of the others, a man looking in, if anything, a worse condition than the woman, torn clothing revealing discoloured flesh beneath. 

Boyfriend? Shit. No wonder Gary wouldn’t touch anything the Empire brought in. And might explain why Ellie…

“ ‘Boyfriend’,” yeah,” the woman snorted, interrupting my thoughts. “Boyfriend for pay, maybe.”

“Gary seems to really like him,” the man said quietly.

“Didn’t stop him from getting paid every time he sucked him off.”

The man looked away, and something about the way he looked tore at my heart.

“Do you know what Gary’s boyfriend’s name is?” I asked him gently.

He blinked. “Something Spanish sounding? Javier or Xavier? Something like that.”

“And do you remember where he worked?”

“He was some sort of night security guard, I think.”

“I’m fairly sure he worked near the Fairfield estate,” the woman said. “Gary complained about having to get the 9 and 18 buses to get there and back.”

I waited for a moment, but that was all they had, though what they had given me was actually useful. There were a lot of companies over there that used ‘approved’ security companies to avoid any trouble with the Empire — yet another way those fuckers extorted money out of the community, as well as making sure only the ‘proper’ people had jobs — and I couldn’t imagine any of them hiring someone with a name like Javier.

“So, where did Gary squat?”

They waved me over to one edge of the warehouse. It had very obviously already been gone over, nothing left of any practical use. I prodded through what was left — mostly loose wrappers of various kinds.

And a card, with one word on it: Reasonable.

Shit.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to FrustratedFreeboota and Kittius for their help in ironing out the kinks.

I entered the business that proudly proclaimed it was owned by Elias Jones, Bail Bondsman. It had a vaguely grimy air, filled with the stale scent of desperation. A mild-mannered looking man with dark skin looked up from the car magazine on the desk in front of him.

“How can I help you, ma’am?” he asked.

“I’m here to talk to Reasonable.”

“Ah.” He nodded to a door in the back of the shop.

A man with a smile like a shark waited within, looking almost dwarf-like in stature, seated as he was between two walls of muscle that were some of his signature thugs. “So,” he said, “what can I do for you?” He pursed his lips consideringly. “Crystal.”

“I’m here to ask if you know anything about the whereabouts of a guy called Gary McKinnock.”

One of the walls moved towards me, more quickly than I’d expected given his size. “Don’t—” he snarled.

I raised my hand instinctively, red energy aching to burst from it as Reasonable snapped, “Ivan! No!”

Ivan stilled. For a moment, the room was a frozen tableau — I was unwilling to lower my hand before the threat receded, my instincts begging me to blast him away — before Reasonable added, “Ivan, relax. You’re being rude to our guest.”

Ivan’s face twisted in confusion, but he returned to Reasonable’s side. I lowered my hand, pushing my anger at being threatened back into a box; the anger I’d had to learn to control ever since…

Well.

No one was entirely sure whether Reasonable — not so much his cape name as a contraction of The Last Reasonable Man in the Bay, as he liked to call himself — was actually a cape or not. Was he a Master, who used his power on people directly? Was he some kind of bio-tinker? Or had he just purchased the products of a cape? No one knew for sure, and Reasonable just liked to smile enigmatically when asked. It didn’t really matter — for all intents and purposes, he was a rogue or a villain, depending on who you asked. Never high enough on anyone’s radar to actually deal with, and always with just enough information to get off the hook if the heroes did come knocking for one reason or another.

“I must apologise,” Reasonable said unctuously. “Without your uniform, Ivan didn’t realise that we were being visited by a member of the illustrious New Wave. He’s very protective of me, you see, and he knows how much questions upset me.”

Whatever Reasonable did to his thugs, it certainly didn’t improve their intelligence. But they were all willing, as far as anyone could tell. There was always someone willing to do pretty much anything for a job around here, even if that meant their bodies being distorted by powers.

I smiled thinly. “So, Gary McKinnock.” I showed him the picture on my phone. “He had one of your tickets in his possession.”

Reasonable rose to his feet and made a big display of going through the filing cabinet behind me, Ivan glaring at me while his boss’ back was turned. I smiled thinly at him in response, not backing down one iota. 

“Gary McKinnock… Gary McKinnock…” Reasonable said, in a vague way that didn’t fool me one bit. “Ah, yes. Here we are. Yes, young Gary had amounted quite the debt in his short time using my services.”

I clenched my teeth. “Had you collected?” No one was entirely sure what Reasonable did with the body parts he collected in lieu of late payments. Some said that he used them to make his potions to make thugs, or that he used them to add organ redundancies to them. Some said that he used them to pay off whatever bio-tinker actually created them, some said he sold them off on the black market, and some said that he had an unnatural appetite and dined on long pig nightly.

Of all the options, I was most certain the last one wasn’t true. Reasonable was a businessman above all else, and I couldn’t imagine him literally eating his profits like that. 

Boding well for Gary at least, he claimed to have never killed someone in the process of repossession, and no one had ever proved otherwise. But the people desperate enough to come to him for a loan were rarely the kind that anyone cared about. Not the police, or the Protectorate, or even New Wave. 

And so he survived.

“Collect?” Reasonable raised his eyebrows in fake shock. “Oh, you mean did I send Ivan to—” he made some slicing motions in the air. “No, no, sadly I do believe that young Gary welched on his debt to me. We had just started talking about… alternative payment plans when he told me that he was going to come into a way to pay off his debt in full. As you can imagine, I was quite delighted! But, alas, he does seem to have disappeared. I must admit that I am as interested in his location as you are.” He leaned forwards. “I do hear on the grapevine that you take private commissions. Perhaps..?”

“Perhaps?” I was willing to let him talk, at least.

“Well, there’s the small matter of an item he was going to deliver to me. Since you’re looking for him anyway, if you happen to come across it, I’d be willing to give you quite a generous finders fee.” He gave me a greasy smile

“And exactly what would this ‘item’ be?”

“Do we have a deal, then? I’m sure you can understand I can’t give out that kind of confidential information without an ironclad guarantee.”

For a moment, there was a part of me that was tempted. Not only for the case, not only for the money, but also for a contact in Brockton Bay’s dank underground, where Mom and the rest of New Wave would never dare tread. A contact who might be able to help me do something more than just play tag and catch up with the villains. A contact who was far from the worst person in that community, for that matter.

But it passed. I wasn’t going to get myself involved in anything criminal, especially not when all my instincts told me that Reasonable wouldn’t hesitate to blackmail me and my family if he really needed to.

Besides, just the fact that Reasonable was interested in whatever it was that Gary was aiming to have stolen told me more. As far as I knew, Reasonable wasn’t a typical fence. He wouldn’t deal in drugs, in gold or precious gems, or the standard kind of electronics that thieves might steal from homes. No, if Reasonable was involved, it would be something a bit more unusual. Documents, possibly. Weapons, maybe. Tinkertech or parahuman generated materials, if Gary could have somehow gotten his hands on them.

So I equivocated instead. “If I find anything that’s yours, I’ll be sure to return it to you.”

He gave me a not entirely sincere smile in return, spreading his hands wide. “That’s all I ask, dear Crystal. That’s all I ask.”

But he didn’t elaborate further.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to FrustratedFreeboota and Kittius. Whatever is good they've helped. All problems are my own

It was dark by the time I dropped down out of the sky near the Fairfield estate, and my phone had been buzzing the entire way. I was entirely unsurprised to see that Mom had left half a dozen messages, asking where I was in an increasingly desperate tone. I rolled my eyes and texted her back, telling her that I was fine, that I was at a friend’s and that, yes, I would make up the patrolling time tomorrow.

It wasn’t as though it had been an important patrol. Just a general display to show any worthy donors that yes, New Wave was still in the game.

At least the weather had cleared up, and there were even a few stars peeking through holes in the clouds.

Walking around, I ignored all of the security stickers/dogwhistles that told anyone who was in the know that this business was protected by the Empire, focussing instead on the ones that weren’t.

On the third company, Hermes Shipping, protected by Titanium Solutions, I hit pay dirt.

“W-what, no, we’ve never had a Xavier on staff here,” a man, whose badge proclaimed him to be Mike Williams, lied extremely unconvincingly. The light from the security booth glimmered off the sweat on his balding ruddy head.

I widened my eyes in faux desperation. “Please, you don’t understand. My brother’s missing, and Xavier is the last person who saw him.” I showed him the picture of Gary. “Have you seen him?”

Mike drummed his fingers against his desk, looking extremely uncomfortable. “I’ll, uh, I can ask around?” he offered.

“Would you?” I said, almost gushing. “I’d be ever so grateful.”

I lurked nearby while he phoned a number. “Hi,” he said. “Yeah, um, I’ve got a girl here looking for a Xavier who works here, which is of course ridiculous because we’ve never had an employee by that name. Apparently she’s looking for her brother, who this Xavier guy knew? Yeah, name of Gary? Oh. Okay. Yeah. I’ll let her know. I’m sure she’ll be very grateful.” He put the phone down and turned to me. “Yeah, apparently someone at the office might have heard of this Xavier. Not that he’s ever worked here, but apparently the guy in the office will be heading over shortly and, like, is willing to talk with you and try to help you if he can?”

Well, if that didn’t smell fishier than the docks, I’d eat my hat. Still, at this point I’d take what I could get.

Maybe Gary had managed to escape, with or without his prize, and all this security force wanted to do was tie up loose ends. Maybe Xavier had just been fired, and Mike was denying it for liability reasons.

Maybe.

I really hoped so.

I was so caught up in my thoughts that I didn’t realise anyone was approaching from behind me until there was a gun pressed against my back.

Crap. That was way too close for my forcefield to come between us, and even if I blasted him…

Yeah, no.

I took a deep breath, and tried to not let my rage and fear explode out of me.

“Excuse me,” I said in a quavering voice, and this time I didn’t have to pretend. “Please don’t shoot me.”

Mike looked up, and his ruddy skin went white. “U-u-um…” he stammered, looking completely flummoxed.

“You didn’t see a thing, Mr Williams,” came a gravelly voice from behind me and to the left. Not whomever was holding the gun. Double crap. “Rest assured, we know where you live, and we know where your family lives.”

Mike’s eyes bulged for a second before he looked down and away, turning his music on and the volume up.

“Now,” the same voice said. “Please come this way, Ms..?”

“Ellingsworth,” I said, the first name that sprang to mind. “Ellie for short.”

“Come on then, Ellie,” the voice said. “Let’s have a nice, quiet, civilised talk away from Mr Williams.”

I moved in the direction I was pushed, across the parking lot, then around the corner of the warehouse. Just a minute, I asked an unseen deity, just a few seconds when the gun is far enough away that…

But not even one such second happened, and shortly the unseen presence behind me indicated that I should stop.

The second set of footsteps continued around and, as they did so, the man clicked a flashlight in a way that would have surely blinded me if my powers didn’t protect me from such an inconvenience. The man was about average height, with greying hair and an utterly dead look in his eyes. It promised he would have absolutely no hesitation in shooting me dead if it advanced his agenda the slightest bit.

“So, Ellie,” he said. “What can you tell us about your brother?”

“He’s, um, he has issues, but he’s good at heart. He’s… he and my parents have had their problems, but I know he’s going to get better. He promised me.”

“And then he disappeared. “

“Yes!”

“And when did you last see him?” There was a slight intensity to his question, like this was an important one.

Should I lie or should I tell the truth? I made an intuitive leap, and blurted, “Three days.”

The intensity in his voice increased. “What time three days ago, Ms Ellingsworth?”

Crap. Ellie hadn’t told me that. “Um, honestly not sure. I wasn’t looking at a clock. It could have been a little past ten, or it could have been earlier or later.”

He exchanged glances with whomever was behind me, before returning to focus his attention on me. “Could it have been after eleven, but before one in the morning?”

“It could have been,” I babbled. “Yes, yes, I think it was.”

“Excellent. One final question, and then we’ll let you go. Did he show you anything, anything unusual?”

“No?” I said. “Nothing I remember. I think he was looking a bit pale, but…”

“Not anything weird that you didn’t recognise?” the man interrupted. “Say, for instance, a rod that looked like it was made out of black glass, with a circuit diagram etched on it?”

So it had been tinker tech that Gary had stolen, and apparently successfully. I really hoped that Ellie hadn’t been holding out on me.

“No!” I said, urgently. “Nothing like that!”

The man made a gesture, and suddenly the gun was gone from my back… just in time for its butt to collide with my head.

I fell to the floor, my head swimming, stunned. The man sounded like he was speaking through water, saying something like well done for restraining your temper this time Davids, until after we’d made sure we’d got it all back…

But most importantly, there was a gap between us, and finally, **finally** my fear, anger and pain had a chance to explode out from me in a burst of coruscating red light.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to FrustratedFreeboota and Kittius

They — the man who had questioned me, and the woman had been holding the gun on me from behind — were alive, I was somewhat distantly glad to find. Not that I’d acted in anything other than self-defence, but…

 

I was glad.

 

“Don’t move,” I said to their groaning bodies, and kicked their weapons away.

 

Mom was going to pitch a **fit** when she found out what had happened here.

 

I briefly went through their pockets, and found out that they were, indeed employees of Titanium Solutions. Mr Gerald Riviera and Ms Dana Davids.

 

Crap. I could already tell what story they — or rather their lawyers — were going to tell when they woke up. They’d been patrolling and had found an intruder on the premises. They’d ordered them to stand down, and then been attacked by parahuman abilities.

 

Crap, crap, crap.

 

Aunt Carol was going to be livid as well.

 

Still, they’d talked about something that was probably tinker tech, which at least bounced it up to the PRT. Hopefully they’d place a little more weight on my word. Maybe they’d even find something coborating on the premises.

 

I could only hope.

 

After double-checking that my would-be murderers wouldn’t be going anywhere, I moved away to make the dreaded phone call. Thankfully, Val was manning the line. She didn’t waste my time with a bazillion questions. Nor -- unlike Carl -- did she broadcast judgement over the phone line. She just took down the details and asked me to wait until the pickup van got there.

 

I was going to be so late.

* * *

 

By the time I’d finally gotten home — getting a taxi rather than flying, due to the knock on the head — it was past one. Mom was in the living room, already tapping her foot ominously as I opened the door.

 

“What—“ she started, then looked at me closer. “What happened to you?”

 

Oh yes. My face had taken some of the brunt of the fall.

 

“It’s… it’s a long story, Mom. Cape business, as it turned out. I’m sure you’ll be getting the PRT report tomorrow.” I hung my head, my tiredness overcoming my pride. “Can we talk about it in the morning?”

 

Mom sprang into team leader mode. “How badly are you hurt? Should we get your cousin to take a look at it?”

 

I shook my head, then wished I hadn’t. “It mostly looks worse than it is. The only thing at all serious is a blow to the head, and, well.”

 

She looked at me sharply. “I hope you realise that I’ll be waking you every few hours, just in case. And I expect a **full** report in the morning.”

 

There had been a time, a few years ago, when even the thought of getting a hug from her would have been suffocating. Thank god for family counselling, I thought as I wrapped my arms around her, because at that moment, there was nothing I wanted more.

* * *

The next lunchtime, after Amy had checked me out and declared that my brain was no more scrambled than usual, and after I’d given a full and detailed report to mother — eliding the fact that this wasn’t just a one off favour for a friend — I put my uniform on, and did what I should have done to begin with.

 

But I’d had hope. Even if in Brockton Bay, hope all too often seemed like just another four letter word.

 

I flew over to the morgue to check on the unidentified bodies that had been picked up.

 

It was amazing, the power that a hero cape uniform can give a person. Technically, the morgue attendants had no reason to even let me in the front door. Practically, however, the girl on duty almost fell over herself to let me in.

 

And, yes, there was the body of an unidentified white male, matching the image in my phone. It had been dumped in one of the less salubrious areas of the Bay. He’d been shot, close range, with a injury that more or less matched the gun I’d been held up with.

 

Hopefully they could use ballistics to nail the bastards.

 

Also present was the body of an unidentified hispanic male, killed in a similar manner. I… didn’t know his last name, but I passed his details on. Hopefully the PRT could find that out, either from the records of Titanium Solutions or some of the less crooked people who worked there.

 

Unsurprisingly, the effects they had been found with did not include a black glass rod.

* * *

“I’m really sorry,” I said as I held a sobbing Ellie at her home after school. “But if it’s any consolation, I think there’s a very good chance that the bastards who did it are going away.”

 

“Thank you,” she said thickly, clinging to me. “Just… I really didn’t realise you would get hurt. I’m so sorry, I can…” she reached for her pocket again, and I pushed her hand away.

 

“It’s really not necessary,” I said. 

 

She gave me a watery smile. “You know, he was the reason I went apeshit on anyone who looked at you crosswise when you came out?”

 

“Oh?” I said trying for lightness. I didn’t like to think about that time. I was so angry… and so determined never to hide again. I honestly thought that I might have gotten expelled for using powers on school grounds if Ellie hadn’t been there like a guard dog.

 

“No one was there for him like that when he got outed. No one good, anyway. It’s why…” Her face crumpled and she started crying again.

 

Oh. Oh god. Brockton Fucking Bay. Filled with nazis, racists and homophobes who of course point at the nazis and say we’re not that bad, and people who are afraid to stand up to the racists and homophobes because of the nazis.

 

It was better at Arcadia. But, as I’d discovered to my cost, that only extended as far as the school grounds, and sometimes not even then. 

 

I paused. This really wasn’t the time, but… Well, there was always the chance whoever had employed Mr Riviera and Ms Davids would come looking for what they had lost. So it was better for everyone if this got sorted out as quickly as possible. “Just to check,” I said. “He didn’t leave anything with you, did he? Like a black glass rod?”

 

She looked up at me, surprised. “No? It’s… Is that what he stole, what got him killed?”

 

I shrugged. “Part of it, at least.”

 

“No, sorry,” she said, sounding completely puzzled. “There was nothing like that.” 

 

I squinted at her. She seemed to be completely genuine.

 

“And nothing like that has turned up?”

 

Another shake of the head, and tears once more welled from her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just so…” She started crying again.

 

I felt even more wretched, if that was possible. “I’m really sorry to bring this up right now. But if there’s tinker tech, and it’s left alone too long… there’s a chance that something will go wrong.” Which was true, technically, albeit rather unlikely. “Is there… if Gary was to have hidden something here, do you know where it would have been?”

 

She wiped her face, vigorously if somewhat ineffectually, and chewed her lip, before looking at me. “Well, we used to hide secret treasures and such in the roots of the tree in the garden,” she said dubiously. “In a plastic bag, of course. There’s an old burrow there where you can hide things out of sight.”

 

“It’s worth a shot,” I said philosophically. Hiding something there meant he wouldn’t have had to risk entering the house again. 

 

She led me to the tree, and a small hole that I really only noticed when she pushed her hand into it.

 

“Oh!” she said. “There’s something there!” She pulled her hand out, and in it was a clear plastic bag. Contained within was a black glass rod etched with a complex design.

 

Ellie looked at me, her face twisted. “What does it mean?” she asked.

 

I shrugged. “Maybe it was his version of an apology, for all the things he took off you.” 

 

“Really?” she said, a stunted hope blooming amongst the grief.

 

It could have been. 

 

I smiled at her. “Doesn’t it seem like the brother you knew?”

 

She burst into tears again, this time not all bad. She buried her face in the top of my head. “Thank you,” she murmured again and again.

 

It really could have been a twisted form of an apology.

 

Or it could have been an instinct to split up a score, to make sure none of his friends, or his fence, could rob him of everything.

 

We’d never know. And, in the end, did it really matter?

 

In the meantime, I had to hand this rod over to the PRT. Who knew what they’d found, if anything, in that warehouse, but maybe this rod could at least give them a hint about what they’d been transporting.

 

Hopefully, it was just something passing through, nothing to do with the Bay at all.

 

But since when had we ever been that lucky?

  
  



End file.
